Oh, how I hate bank holidays (purely from a blogging point of view, of course, but we'll come to that later). Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of the things in principle of course. Any day that means I don't have to drag my reluctant and failing body up to do some work is a bonus (the "working weak" as I sometimes think of myself), but they do all fall under the umbrella (such an appropriate analogy for a bank holiday weekend) of my eternal nemesis "organised fun". It's almost as if the prospect of about 54% of the Great British Public at play (because so many still have to work them anyway) fills me with the kind of internal horror that is difficult to explain but still manages to send a shudder right down to the depths of my soul. Perhaps its just the mental image of all those barbecues being tended to by lager-filled "blokes" wearing aprons they got free with one of the tabloids, whilst their kids scream around the lawns, and them then ultimately ending the day clogging up both the A&E departments of our hospitals, and my TV screen with the "hilarious" footage that got them there, but then I do get so terribly cynical about such things.
The idea of the "Bank" holiday came about because the banks used to close to respect various religious and holy days. These used to include about 33 Saint's days throughout the year when the Bank of England was closed. In 1834 they reduced these holidays to merely four: May Day, All Saints Day, Good Friday and Christmas Day. The Bank Holidays act of 1871 was brought in by the Banker and Liberal Politician Sir John Lubbock, chosen mostly, it seems, because he was a big cricket fan who thought that his bank employees should be given an opportunity to attend or play in the big matches when they were played. In the area in which he lived, the dates he chose for the public holidays just happened to be the very dates when traditional games were held on. For a while these days off from the grind of Victorian toil were popularly known as "St. Lubbock's Days" because of him. One hundred years later, the Banking and Financial Dealings act of 1971 finally shaped the pattern of the sequence of national holidays which we now currently 'enjoy', although New Year's Day and the May Day Bank holidays were added to the this list later on, and they all still have to be confirmed each year by Royal Proclamation to juggle the dates around to avoid the dates falling on a weekend or adding the odd special (usually Royal Event based) extra date.
Personally, I nearly always seem to struggle to find something to do with the actual day (or indeed the whole weekend) and usually end up squandering these eagerly anticipated national holidays on moping around the house thinking about doing stuff but not actually doing or achieving very much. It's almost as if the weight of expectation overwhelms me and, because I feel that I ought to be doing something, the decision as to what that something should be gains so much significance that I actually end up spending so much time in consideration of what to actually do that I end up doing nothing much at all. There's also the not insignificant consideration of whether I wish to avoid crowds of other people trying to entertain themselves in much the same way, and avoiding the prospect of sitting in an enormous queue of traffic for huge chunks of the day. Still, there are other distractions nearer to home that you can also consider. This time, I thought, at least there would be the background of the test match on the radio to do whatever I was doing along to (Lubbock would have been so proud) but the incessant rains in Cardiff have even interfered with that.
Back in the day, during the "wilderness years" of the 1990s, I learned to dread these weekends. The prospect of three or four whole drizzle-filled days alone in my tiny inner-city flat used to make me thoroughly miserable for much of the week leading up towards the holiday. My fellow employees would all seem be planning various exciting possibilities and all I had to look forward to was three days in which I probably wouldn't talk to a single soul. All but one of them, anyway. I did once make the mistake of asking one of my colleagues as we were heading off to our homes and into the void of a long holiday weekend whether he was looking forward to the break. "In all honesty", he said, "You will probably be the last person I speak to until we get back on Tuesday morning..." So, it wasn't just me. He also one told me that his default response when answering the telephone was "Hello, Mum."
Ironically what I would do was watch videotape. Hours and hours of videotape, just to while the long, lonely hours away. It was usually a good opportunity to sit through one of the longer series that I seldom had the free time to sit down and enjoy, although it was always really quite difficult to concentrate as I spent rather too much time hoping that remotely outside probability that the telephone might just actually ring might happen. It seldom did, of course, but it used to nag away at the back of the mind and quite ruin the taste of whatever televisual treat which I had settled down to endure. One weekend I filled a good eight or more hours one day with the "Godfather Trilogy" and when later I explained to someone that this was what I had done, expecting the usual sympathetic ear or a derogatory snort of derision at my perceived "sadness", instead they told me that they were actually jealous, and would have loved to have a day doing that instead of having to entertain their children through a long, dull, wet holiday weekend.
The grass, as they say, is always greener...
Nevertheless, I wouldn't be without the things. They punctuate the year and give us all a tiny bit of something to look forward to when the days of slogging away seem to be never ending. From a blogging point of view, however, the weekend seems to fall stone dead. Everyone else (it seems) is too busy being away from the shackles of their own professional keyboard to find any moment to check in and see what delightful nuggets are being offered by we simple word-wrangling costermongers. Even on an ordinary weekend the amount of activity can become depressingly slight and, to a pathetic and desperate soul such as I am, can make me question (again...) the whole purpose of rattling out these yarns and notions to place them before a totally disinterested world. Why, of course, I should feel like this, is of course ridiculous. Any creative process should be (and to be honest, probably is) enjoyable for its own sake and not for the response of anyone else, but it doesn't half help to get the occasional feeling that there is some greater purpose to what you're doing. I fear, though, that this probably simply proves my own narcissism (but it's only fair that I share...), or just that the average bank holiday weekend just gives you too much extra time to think about these matters...
I really should get out more.
Well I'm here online too, bank holiday or not. Though as you say, the majority of people are either stuck in motorway traffic with screaming kids, pretending to enjoy a barbeque in the rain or getting wasted in the pub, so we probably don't need to feel too guilty about whatever we do or don't achieve...
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